The Army has pushed its iconic Humvee combat truck as far as it can go and needs to press ahead with the Joint Tactical Light Vehicle.

The Army cannot load any more armor, communications equipment or other next-generation gear onto the Humvee, according to Lt. Gen Robert Lennox, chief of the Army office in charge of funding service programs.

The service is pursuing multimillion-dollar effort to revamp the Humvee. But some have argued the Army can save millions if they just used upgraded Humvees to do the job of the JLTV. “I do not think we can,” Lennox told me yesterday when I asked if the Army could use the Humvee to replace the JLTV.

The upgraded Humvees were designed to supplement, not replace, the JLTV, Lennox explained. The Army would have to add a slew of additional upgrades to get the Humvee on par with the JLTV, he added.